Dermaphoria (9 page)

Otto and I spent as much time with scratchpads as lab gear. We consulted music videos, soft drink commercials and fashion magazines. We brainstormed dye mixtures, stencil logos and shapes for pill-press molds.

Truckers were traditional. They wanted Black Beauties, Red Devils and Yellow Jackets. We added our own Johnnies and Ronnies, named after porn stars renowned for their stamina. We made Diesels, Choppers, Block Sixes, Straight Eights and Road Dogs whose mechanical names spoke of the job they did to the motorhead taking them.

What suburban white kids espoused as rebellion was, in truth, disposable income personified. We mass branded their counterculture symbols and sold them back in pill form. Abductors were popular, as were Strobes, Probes and Roswells. Trends changed by the week and we were scant minutes behind. Whether it’s desert dispatch and chicken wire enforcement or a beige cubicle and a 401(k), it’s the same game. Manufacturing, R&D, distribution, sales and marketing. I had the pins in the map before I ever met White.

People had to be dependable. If someone said they were going to be at a certain place at a certain time, they need to be there. How late they were was directly proportional to how much time they needed to rendezvous in a public restroom or the back of a utility van and get wired with a tapeworm and briefed by the bug machines. If someone brought a friend, that someone was cut off, permanently.

White said tell me what you need and who uses it and we’ll take care of you. White arrives at Oz in the heat of noon. I’ve sweat through my T-shirt and Otto was gone to Las Vegas again but that was fine with me because we’d made some improvements in the lab that I wanted kept quiet. We’d brought a floor safe out in a rented truck, and spent the morning hammering through the space in the foundation to drop it in. It wasn’t for cash being transferred, it was for our own.

I saw White’s van outside and could have sworn I heard more than one set of footsteps, but nobody said anything and I waited for the knock that never came. I stepped outside, wiping sweat from my forehead and White was waiting patiently, looking through a stack of documents.

“We’ve arranged for the documents for front companies,” White says, “as well as putting the title to the house under an alias. My associate has taken care of the paperwork for us.”

I hadn’t noticed him, at first.

“No disrespect, Manhattan, but you need to tell me if you’ll be bringing anyone else. I mean, somebody I haven’t met.”

He was standing out in front of the house, and he was about my age, a little younger, a little older, it was hard to say. Red hair and blue eyes, dressed in a dark gray oil jacket over a gray T-shirt of almost the same shade. Just over his jacket pocket, where a grease monkey might tuck his pen and tire gauge, was an oval of stitching where the embroidered name tag had been removed. He was wearing tan work pants and dark brown work boots, and with the combination of colors, dark grey and tan, sitting in the sharp daytime shadows of the dilapidated desert house, he’s invisible. I didn’t even see him out of the corner of my eye and he was completely still and expressionless. Except for his red hair, there was nothing distinct about him at all. It took me a moment to realize what was off about him, and it was the fact that, as natural-looking as his blue-collar wardrobe might have been, it was only slightly worn. Otherwise, his clothes were immaculately cleaned and pressed and he had only put them on moments ago after giving his boots a final spit polish. I only noticed this because I was such a clean freak myself, so I could see it in someone else, but the effect was one of total anonymity.

“I’m Eric,” I extended my hand, but the red haired guy didn’t respond. It was like making eye contact with a stuffed hunting trophy.
“You got a name?”

“You heard him,” he said, “my name’s Associate.”

He held a cigarette to his mouth though I could have sworn his hand was empty and I didn’t see him reach for his pocket.

“You can’t smoke here,” I said.

“It’s not lit.”

“Listen,” I was doing my best to stay collected, “I’ve got a lot of combustible materials in there. I can’t have anyone smoking within five hundred feet of the lab.”

The Associate stooped to pick up a stone and said, “We’re five hundred and twenty eight feet from your front door.” He tossed the rock and said, “That’s five hundred feet.”

He had what I needed, though. My name was on nothing and any eyes tracing activity to and from the lab would die in the paperwork labyrinth White’s Associate had created.

After Oz came Gotham. After Gotham came Valhalla. The network grew, as did the system for coding, concealing and signaling. Each crew knew their own set of codes, but I had to know them all. The bigger the network grew, the more we produced and the more I was left alone to work, but more room for error was introduced. If anyone in the network cut a corner or missed a step, the rogue molecules had a slim chance of either curing cancer or ending the world, but would most likely yield chemical waste that I’d end up paying for.

T
HE TRUCK STOP COFFEE TASTED LIKE ACETONE BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT MY
fingers smelled like when the lab work was finished. Two highway patrolmen took the opposite booth and I set my steaming cup down before my hands burst into quiet blue flame. I gave the waitress my order and went to scrub my hands again, then dialed my machine from the pay phone. The female android voice said,
You have. Twenty. Six. New messages
.

Twenty-six calls from a supplier who had my home number by mistake. Twenty-six calls from White. From Otto, the EPA or the DOJ. Twenty-six fires, subpoenas or arrest warrants. The solvents on my fingers mingled with the odor of cheap soap and the rotting sock stench of phosphorus.

You home yet? Okay, just seeing if you were. I’m working the promenade tonight, then I’ve got a street fair tomorrow. Call me as soon as you get back. Bye.

You scared me, Desiree.

Hey sweetie, you there? Hello? Pick up if you’re there. Okay, I’m off to work. If you get this, just let yourself in and I’ll be home by 11:00. I really want to see you
.

Hey, where are you? Give me a call. Bye
.

Eric. Call me. Just let me know when you’re coming home
.

Hey, I’m sorry I snapped. I know you’re busy. I didn’t mean to get so
angry. I had a bad night, but I’m hoping the street fair will be better. I was hoping you’d be back so you could come with me. If you’re not back now, then you probably won’t be home until tonight. Late, right?

Hey you, I’m home. And you’re not. Just call when you get this. No matter how late. Don’t worry about waking me up, I just want to hear your voice.

I disconnected and dialed your number. Your machine picked up.

“Desiree, please stop calling. I’ll be back tonight. I’m done working and I’m on the road. I stopped for lunch, but I’m heading out again and I’ll be there as quickly as I can. Bye.”

I asked the waitress to bag my order. The fear had blown through me like an electrical surge and shorted out my appetite. Maintaining composure while sipping coffee next to a pair of cops, with four ounces of refined red phosphorus inside my trunk, seemed like slow torture.

“Young man?”

My hand was on the diner door when the patrolman stopped me.

“Officer?”

“That your car out there?”

My tags were good. The car was cherry, every light working and every window and mirror without a crack. I stank of the shitwater lab.

“The Ford.” The cop dumped gravy onto a pile of potatoes.

“The ’64, yeah, it’s mine.”

“You restore it yourself?”

Be cool. This guy might stop you, one day.

“Most of the engine work,” I said.

“All original?”

“Salvage and stock.” I glanced at my wrist, the one hint I knew to throw out before I said something stupid. I wasn’t wearing a watch.

“The dashboard looked brand new.”

“A guy in El Segundo did the work.”

“I guess I don’t need to say drive carefully. Have a good one.”

“Thanks. Same to you.”

The drive home could have been two hours or ten. It’s a blur. The adrenaline rush faded somewhere around Twenty-Nine Palms as the stars were appearing overhead. I stopped for gas, changed my clothes in the restroom, ran a wet comb through my hair and washed my hands twice more.

You painted your bedroom purple, like the stained edges of morning glory petals, the darkest edge of the twilight sky, and I thought I was back outside with your window frame hanging midair.

“You’re late. What do you think?”

The marks had been good to you. You’d painted the mirror’s frame gold and covered an entire wall in velvet draperies. Your fortune-teller persona enveloped everything.

“I think it looks like a vampire whorehouse.”

“I knew you’d like it. You’d better be hungry.”

“I’m famished. I just don’t feel like eating out.”

“Good, because I’m cooking. Keep your coat on.”

I’d been driving all day and had barely dropped my bag before we were out your door, again. You hadn’t acknowledged your assault on my answering machine.

“What’s that?”

“Guess.” I tossed a frozen pizza into the grocery cart.

“I’m not buying frozen pizza.”

“No, I am.” The bright lights and piped-in music of the grocery store made my head hurt.

“Fine, but not for tonight. I told you I’m cooking. You like ahi, don’t you?”

“Sure. I love ahi.”

“Help me pick out some stuff for salad.”

I picked a head of lettuce. You made a face, as though I’d fished it from a dumpster.

“You don’t cook, do you?”

That depends on what you mean.

In an aisle below a C
OUGH
& C
OLD
R
EMEDIES
sign, boxes upon bottles of pills and syrups promised new cures for old ailments. Marketing experts and focus groups point to colors—orange for pain, yellow for breathing, blue for sleep. PR firms run damage control when somebody spikes a random bottle. The warning labels grow longer, the print smaller. The laws change while the human body stays the same. Colds and headaches remain colds and headaches, and 95 percent of every pill on the market is inert binders and dyes.

The experts rig that 5 percent sweet spot with molecular detonator switches. Your solvent is off purity by 1 percent, your temperature wrong by a single degree, and you lose everything. They count on amateur cooks being discouraged, but they don’t count on them being curious. For the curious, each failure shines another light onto the problem, which makes the slow diffusion of the chemical self-destruct mechanism so much sweeter when it’s achieved, and there wasn’t a pill on those shelves I couldn’t pick apart, atom by atom, and pluck out precisely the atoms I needed.

The Buddha found enlightenment with Anaïs Nin, perched at the cracked spine of
Delta of Venus
. The jade deity belly laughed at the cosmic jokes the rest of us couldn’t hear, turned luminous blue at the
edges as I held my stare, unblinking, and the blue grew brighter, washing out your bookshelves, my bare feet propped on your couch, then the couch itself. The humming blue swallowed your curtains, your paintings and your twenty-six messages. It swallowed Pinstripe and his acid burns, the heated discussion with Manhattan White, my panic and the acetone stench wafting to the cops eight feet from me at the diner.

“Wash up,” you said. “Dinner’s ready.” You dropped the plates with the same cold protest Mom made with Dad. The silence took me back home to my parents, to navigating the air of muted rage in our two-bedroom, evangelical pressure cooker.

Anyone knowing who I was could have sent me to prison for the combined contents of our shopping cart. You’d asked for distilled water. I picked up a bottle of mineral water. You put it back. Coffee filters, Epsom salts. For the split moment it takes for a fly’s wings to beat, I thought you were on to me.

“Let’s go. Now.”

“I’m not finished. Just a minute.” Your urgency for a romantic dinner was nowhere to be seen.

Iodine, bleach, rubbing alcohol, drain opener. Years of learning became discipline, discipline became habit. Habit became reflex and reflex became normal, not a reaction but my perpetual state of seeing. To convince me otherwise would be describing color to a blind man, water to a fish.

Who sent you?

“I am finished. And tired. I drove all day and would have been perfectly happy with a frozen pizza.”

*

My hands smelled of sage and wildflowers from your soap. I dried them on a towel that smelled like your skin and hair, holding it to my face and breathing you in, amid the Mardi Gras beads, dried flowers, miniature framed photographs, eyebrow pencils and lipsticks in your bathroom. I folded the towel, felt the slightest feather touch against my eye and pulled one of your threads of fire from my face, a strand of sunlight.

You were washing the dishes.

“You need help with anything?”

You kept your back to me.

“Desiree?”

“Yes, Eric?”

“Do you need me to do anything?”

“No.”

You curled onto your couch after dinner, your feet tucked beneath a blanket pulled tightly around you. The television’s blue glow dulled your hair to a deep brown. I sat down beside you.

“Can I have some blanket, please?”

You relinquished a corner, without touching me. Your dog sat on a floor pillow, following our tense exchange and too timid to come too close to either of us.

You flipped channels, stopping on anything loud and full of laughter. You changed when feigning interest in a commercial exposed your cold shoulder for what it was. I knew this territory well. I could decorate cakes in a cancer ward if the circumstances warranted, but I didn’t want to exhume my ghosts in your house.

We fought on the way home.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just wanted to do something nice for you,” you said. “I haven’t seen you for days and you won’t talk to me.”

“I’ve been working, Dee. Nonstop. I don’t want to talk about work.”

“Then talk about something else.”

“I don’t have anything else.”

“Ask me how I’ve been. Has that occurred to you? Or you could thank me for dinner.”

“You haven’t made dinner yet.”

You pulled into a strip mall and parked next to a squad car.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m telling the cops about you,” you said.

“Telling them what?” God help me, Desiree. I grabbed you. I held your wrist and your key ring scraped my arm.

“Let go of me.”

“Telling them what?”

“Let go of me, you son of a bitch.”

I let go.

“I’m telling them what a bastard you are,” you said, and slammed the door.

The cop walked out of a liquor store, bench-press bulked and buzz cut. He set a deli sandwich onto his hood and popped open a bottle of orange juice. My first reaction was to reach for your keys but you’d taken them. You passed him without a word and entered an auto supply store. I stared at the floor of your car. You emerged three minutes later with two bottles of starter fluid.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Starter fluid, Mr. I Do My Own Engine Work.”

“What for?”

Diethyl ether.

“My starter. What do you care?”

“You work on your own car?”

Coffee filters removed undissolved impurities. Epsom salts were for washing lab gear, their crystal structures trapped maverick water molecules, which could sabotage a controlled reaction.

“No, I don’t,” you said. “I can’t do anything for myself. Except cook and clean. I need a big, strong man to take care of me. And I’m still looking for one.”

You didn’t protest when I turned off the television because you weren’t watching it. You stared at the dead screen, out of ways to ignore me.

“Desiree, I didn’t know you worked on your car.” I reached for you, but you pulled away. “I didn’t know because I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask how you’ve been and I didn’t thank you for dinner. I’m sorry.”

Choking back tears, your face twisted into a mangled mask. My forgotten phone calls and dodged questions added up to a signal I’d been oblivious to sending.

“You snapped at me in front of everyone at the grocery store. You yelled at me. You almost left a bruise.”

“I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Why did you act that way?” Tears and snot.

“I don’t have a reason. I was wrong. I was tired and didn’t have any patience and I took it out on you.”

“I just wanted to do something special for you. I just wanted you to call and talk to me. Just for a minute. That’s all. I know you have work to do.”

“Please stop it, Dee. You shouldn’t have to explain yourself to me. Desiree, I’m sorry. I really am. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you since the minute I left. I haven’t stopped thinking about you.”

You opened your blanket to cover the two of us, your head resting in the crook of my neck so perfectly we could have been carved from the same block of marble. After a long silence, you asked for music and excused yourself. I put on Górecki’s Third Symphony, one of your favorites, shut out the lights and lit a candle. You came back, wearing your underwear and one of my T-shirts. You blew the candle out.

“You don’t like candles?”

“No.”

“You’re serious?”

“You can light it if you want. Just blow it out when we leave the room.”

You wrapped around me, and we sat beneath the blanket listening to the sad symphony in the dark.

Somewhere, there’s a part of me that knows right from wrong. That part of me, lying gagged and bound in my mental basement, still has enough breath to whisper through a spit-soaked gag that I should be protecting you, that if I fail every test of decency known to man, the fallout shouldn’t come to you, that you had nothing to do with any of it. If I’m half a man, I should make certain you never know otherwise. I wanted to protect you, and if that made you angry with me, if it meant your never knowing why, then so be it.

All I need to do is patiently, one after the next, move one molecule from one place to another, one compound at a time, one failure after the next until something hits. It’s a process of elimination. I used to work puzzles as a kid, and my mom taught me how to sort out the edge pieces first, assemble the frame, then apply that same process of elimination to all the remaining pieces. I could group them by color or pattern, whatever the picture was on the box. I learned to pick up each piece, one at a time, from my pile of potential matches and try to fit it from any angle into the socket, then discard it and move on. Each
failure is meaningless. It’s not me, it’s the pieces, and I have to, absolutely must, try each and every piece every possible way until I find the one that fits. They aren’t failures, they’re steps, small bits of progress. I just needed to try moving one molecule at a time and I probably could have done it in your kitchen.